Girls to the Front and the Second Saturn Return

Two Great Topics for Eclipse Season

I had the very good fortune of seeing Allison Anders’s Mi Vida Loca on the big screen at MOMA this past weekend. The Future of Film Is Female has partnered with MOMA on an incredible screening series, Girls to The Front: Nineties and Now.

Many of the films that inspired me as a writer and to become a filmmaker myself are screening there this month. It’s incredible to see them together. The films are personal without feeling small, character-focused without being self-conscious, and, best yet, each is stylistically idiosyncratic and true to itself. These films speak their own cinematic language and play by their own rules.

There is an overall aesthetic here that greatly influenced my own and helped me to see that I didn’t have to tell stories like a dude. And the series creates a bridge by showcasing a younger generation, among them my brilliant former students Raven Jackson and Haley Elizabeth Anderson. (Raven’s film All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is extraordinary.)

"Mi Vida Loca," a film by Allison Anders

Mi Vida Loca is a stunner. It takes place in Echo Park in the early 1990’s (before gentrification) and focuses on a community, members of a girl gang. With rotating voice-over and group protagonist, we are allowed into the innermost thoughts of these girls as they try to define themselves and learn to fend for themselves without men. The boys can’t be relied upon, so the girls look to each other for comfort and sustenance. They love fully and they fight for each other.

Echo Park is my favorite neighborhood in LA. I lived there during the first years of my son’s life and seeing the hills, the pink bougainvillea flowers, the park and the gas station on Echo Park Avenue (and House of Spirits, which I’d been thinking of after watching Liquor Store Dreams last week!) … let’s just say it took me back. The neighborhood is barely recognizable now, filled with overpriced single origin coffee shops and hot restaurants, but like its NYC counterpart the East Village, its soul remains.

If you’re near MOMA, I highly recommend the series. Tragically, Mi Voda Loca is not available to stream, but the DVD may be available at your local library.

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In honor of March’s crazy eclipses and retrogrades, I want you to meet my old friend Jill Dearman, a writer, astrologer and teacher. Jill is a part-time Professor of Writing at NYU and the author of seven books including Bang the Keys: Four Steps to a Lifelong Writing Practice (Penguin) and Jazzed (Vine Leaves Press). As you know, I’m interested in the midlife collating of identities, and that’s where we began:

Jill Dearman

BB: You're a writer, an astrologer, a teacher and a parent: how do you collate all of your identities? What helps them talk to each other? Where is the resonance and the dissonance?

JD: As long as I am being authentic, there is only resonance. I homeschool now, so there’s not a lot of forcing myself and my child to fit into a one-size-fits-all system. I have a really creative teenager who’s a talented musician and artist. Just this morning we took some time to draw together. It reminds me of the way littles would do parallel play in pre-school. I think this is often how artists work together, side by side in silence, then comparing notes afterwards.

Now that my child is a teenager, I think I am at my best when I turn on my teacher/artist hat. My desire is to try and use those nurturing and constructive sides of myself as a parent. But I never feel like parenting gets in the way of creating, nor does teaching. They all inform each other. I guess I feel like “once an artist, always an artist.”

As for collating my identities…. Back in 2006, I launched my first website. I felt like I needed a space online that would sort of explain who I was. Friends like you who I’ve known forever just “get” the mix of things I do. I wanted to create a website that showed an integrated version of myself as a person who was an astrologer, a writer, a teacher. I find myself relaunching the site from time to time to reflect what I offer today. My daughter Phe has her own site too; it’s very cool!

BB: You've said that you recently shifted back into astrology and also astrological counseling. Say more! What precipitated this shift? And what do you see happening astrologically right now?

JD: I noticed that the world is in such chaos, yet at the same time people are waking up spiritually. I had one of those “downloads from the Universe” a little over three years ago in which I basically got my marching orders. The message was: “It’s great that you write novels, but what this planet-in-transition needs from you is your one unique talent—as an astrologer.” I wanted to be of service.

When I was in college I had two identities, as a writer and as a counselor on our crisis hotline. (And wrote our school paper’s horoscope!) After college, I worked for many years as an HIV counselor. So, the balance of being an artist and a healer was nothing new. I shifted into focusing on my next astrology book which is coming together right now. I also recently launched a Substack called Jill Dearman Astrology Lessons. My goal has been to serve the public the way I serve clients. I launched Astrology-Based Counseling just this year but have been working towards it for a while now. An Astrology-Based Counseling session is like getting a chart consult, counseling session, and life coach guidance all rolled into one well-organized, nurturing and results-oriented 45-minute session.

BB: How can creatives better use or even think about astrology? Beyond the old Mercury Retrograde and Saturn Return myths?

JD: I believe one’s natal (birth) chart can be looked at as a map of one’s life, a hero’s journey. Your story is character-based and always evolving and unfolding. And just as a writer or artist of any sort works in conversation with an invisible reader or viewer, you can use astrology to dig deeper into your personal growth potential and make progress in your life. I work long-term with folks the same way I’ve worked as a writing coach.

But speaking of Saturn returns, I am very excited to be working with clients and readers on how to navigate their second Saturn return, which occurs approximately between the ages of 58 and 60. Often, as the mid-fifties approach, one starts to feel a shift. The second Saturn return is all about your legacy: what kind of older person do you want to be? It’s a really amazing time to refocus one’s goals and total attitude towards life and prepare for the next era. But it’s not talked about as much as the first Saturn return which occurs between ages 28-30 and is more about hunkering down to create one’s adult identity.

Finally, since there are many changes to the outer archetypal planets occurring now and in the twenty years to come, I try to offer bite-size astrological guidance through my Substack column that can be used immediately, whether or not you’ve had your chart done. The generational planets—Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto—affect us as a collective. And clearly these times we are living in are all about continual abrupt changes. It’s a great time to blend the powerful, positive forces of creativity and astrology.

BB: What inspires you?

JD: All forms of art, metaphysics, and nature. And my clients! Living on this Earth right now is not for the faint of heart. I feel great kinship for people who are excited to build better lives and a better world. When there’s constant worrying and complaining going on, it feels so much more empowering to be creating.

You can find Jill here and here. Jill has the soul of a mystic, the humor of a native New York and the ability to put all of it into language. Because she’s (duh) a really good writer! Good writers find the story!

Take good care and enjoy the end of March. It’s crazy out there. Do let me know if you see any of the Girls to The Front films and what you think. While the newsletter only comes out twice a month, I’m on Notes pretty much every day. Feel free to say hi!

Love,
Brooke